The wheel tottered. Eeva screamed. The wheel regained balance and shot down the hill on a slightly different path, which was taking them toward town. Or so it seemed to Ras, who could get no accurate picture of their line of flight.
Abruptly, the stone walls and thatch roof of a house appeared hanging downward, sky below it, a frightened face in the window, spun over, was gone, another house, a cry from a doorway soaring out and away, the squawk of a chicken, a thump, a feather floating, a lurch, a splash of water, then the wheel so suddenly slowed it tore him free of his grasp, the lake covering him, uncovering him, and he was lying on the walk up to his neck in water and looking at Eeva, whose wet hairs hung like weeds over her face.
To get out, they had to hold their breaths while squeezing through the spokes under water. They waded to the shore, where the track of the wheel was the path of a monstrous snake. A small dugout with two paddles was on the muddy beach about thirty yards from them. Faces were at the windows of some houses on the edge of the town, and fingers jabbed at them.
Gilluk and the others were halfway down the hill, the king taking two stone steps at a time and holding his sword above his head with one hand. The others were strung out but converging; the common point would be Ras and Eeva.
"Get in the boat!" he said, and he ran toward the nearest hut while she croaked an unintelligible question behind him. As he neared the hut, he heard screams and then saw a woman and two children run from it. He entered the house and found two short spears, a hunting bow, and a quiver of arrows. Before he left, he kicked over a copper tripod containing a fire and threw some sleeping mats on it. He lit a torch and touched off the thatch roof. The houses were so close together that if one caught fire, many or all might, even if the breeze was from the west and this house was on the southeast corner of town.
Eeva was waiting for him in the dugout. She was on her knees, paddle poised, and looking over her shoulder. Her shirt and bra, already rotten and torn, had been ripped off during the descent or perhaps when she had squeezed out between the spokes. The skin on her breasts and stomach was red-raw from scraping against the spokes.
Ras hesitated, then said, "You go ahead; get a good start! I'll be along in another boat!"
He threw a spear into her boat and shoved it out into the lake. He threw the other spear into another dugout and put the strap of the quiver over his shoulder. Holding the bow in one hand, he began to shove the rest of the boats out onto the lake. They went easily enough, but he had to put down the bow and bend with all his strength and dig into the mud, to launch the two heavy war canoes. Fortunately for him, the Sharrikt had been in such a hurry they had not drawn the war canoes very far up onto the beach.
When all the boats were adrift, he ran back to the dugout. On the way, he glanced up the main street. Gilluk was halfway down it with about twenty close behind him and the others strung out. Ras shot at him, but the king saw him while he was fitting the arrow to the string, and he ran into the nearest hut. The arrow stuck quivering in a bamboo pole near the doorway. The other warriors scattered to duck behind the stone houses or to throw themselves onto the ground.
Ras took to the dugout and paddled furiously. Thirty yards out, he looked behind him. Gilluk was dancing on the shore and howling at his men, who were wading or swimming after the boats. The southeast-corner house was burning now, casting flames at its neighbor. A line of slaves and freemen were passing pots of water up from the lake to the fire fighters.
17
THE EYE OF GOD
The island rose up from the lake as gently as the slope of shell of a half-submerged tortoise-god. Twenty yards inland, at the center of the island, was the House of Baastmaast. One hundred feet square, it was built of white limestone blocks. It was windowless and had one square doorway broad enough for two men to enter side by side. It shone in the sun, the only darkness about it being the shadows behind the doorway and a raven perched on one corner.
Ras told Eeva, who was waiting on the beach, to bring two paddles and the spears. He shoved one dugout out into the lake and lifted the other above his head. Carrying it, he walked along the side of the broad and deep canal that cut into the island and thrust through a square hole in the foundation of the temple.
At the doorway, Ras leaned the dugout against the wall and went inside. Eeva said, "Aren't you...?" and closed her mouth.
Inside, the reason for the canal was evident. The water ran under the stone of the floor to feed a sunken pool in the center of the building. This was square and walled with blocks of limestone that rose a foot above the floor. A solid-stone tongue ran from one end of the pool about twenty feet into the water. Ringing the pool was an open flat space of hard-packed dirt ten feet in width. Entirely surrounding the pool, except for the aisle from the entrance, was a series of raised stone seats. These accommodated the spectators while--so Ras guessed--Gilluk and his assistants performed the rituals of sacrifice to Baastmaast. The victims would be thrown from the end of the stone tongue to the crocodile.
There was no roof; the building was open at the top. The sun would light up the interior of the building when it was directly overhead. Now, the sun had westered enough so that the lakeside walls cast a shadow to the edge of the pool. At its far end was a block of stone level with the water, and on this Baastmaast stretched.
Truly, the crocodile must have been as old as the Sharrikt claimed. It must have been dwelling in the pool when the Sharrikt came to the valley. The Dattum, inhabitants of this land before the Wantso came, builders of this temple and the castle on the hill and the houses of the town, had told the Wantso, who in turn had told the Sharrikt, that the crocodile had been living when they had entered this world. The Dattum had made the crocodile their chief god and built the temple around him, and he had been here ever since. The Wantso had fed him and made him a god, and then the Sharrikt had driven them out and possessed the temple and called the crocodile Baastmaast.
The crocodile had never stopped growing, according to Gilluk, who also said that snakes and crocodiles did not stop growing as long as they lived. And since Baastmaast was at least five hundred years old, according to Gilluk's chronology, he was almost twice as long as the largest crocodile Ras had ever seen. He was at least forty feet long.
"Ancient as stone, old as the first heartbeat," Ras murmured.
And then, "But stone wears away, and even the heart of a god must stop."
It was silent in the temple, so silent that Ras thought he could hear the cold, reptilian heart pulsing. The waters were dark, so dark that he could not see Bigagi's body anywhere in the pool. He walked around the pool, looking for the body but unable to keep from watching the enormous and awesome Baastmaast.
Eeva prowled around the place, and in a moment she gasped and then called him. She was standing in front of a pit at the foot of the far wall. It was deep and dark, but not so dark that they could not see Bigagi squatting at its bottom.
"I thought that the ceremony had been interrupted too soon for them to have given Bigagi to the crocodile," she said. "They must have lowered him into this until the time for his part in the proceedings."
The ends of ropes attached to Bigagi's waist and neck were tied to a small wooden post a few feet from the hole. Ras grabbed the ropes and hauled Bigagi out. Bigagi lay motionless; he did not seem to be even breathing, and he had no detectable heartbeat. If he was not dead, he was close to it.
"There is nothing you can do for, or to, him," Eeva said. "Forget about him. Think of us!"
She put both hands around his arm and looked up into his face. "Ras! Maybe you aren't scared of those people, but I am! They'll be here soon! Let's get off here, fast! Why are you waiting here?"
Ras pulled his arm away and said, "I must kill a god."
He walked to the far end of the pool and looked down. The crocodile's eye was open. The iris was a black lance on a yellow field. Or a leaf sprouting from the cold brain inside that armor. The eye had seen five centuries of this narrow world of the po
ol. Human flesh had fed it. And, during mating season, when it had bellowed with frenzy, it had had females brought it. The Sharrikt said that all the crocodiles in this world were his children. And so Eeva, when she had eaten the crocodile eggs, had fed upon divinity.
Ras fitted an arrow to the string and aimed. Baastmaast did not move; the lidless eye stared incuriously at him.
The arrow, driven through the eye and into the clot of brain beyond, would kill it. And five hundred years would die.
Eeva's voice was as sudden and startling as the twang of a released bow.
"Come on!"
Ras jumped. He had been standing with the arrow ready to go for a longer time than he had thought. Too long a time. He put the arrow back into the quiver. Why should he kill Baastmaast? To destroy the god of the Sharrikt would not destroy them. They would be shaken, but they would only make another crocodile their Baastmaast. This beast was a unique; it had lived so long that it would be a great evil to kill it. In a way, it was like Ras. Both were uniques; both had managed to survive much.
"We'll go now," he said. She ran ahead of him through the narrow, high aisle between the raised seats toward the doorway. Then she stopped so suddenly that he almost bumped into her. She had heard the faint, but unmistakable, chop-chop of the copter.
Ras gently pushed her to one side and went to the entrance, where he stuck his head around the corner. The closest boat, Gilluk's war canoe, was halfway across the channel, with the others several yards behind in a ragged semicircle. The copter was a mile away, flying about five hundred feet above the lake shore.
The eight paddlers on Gilluk's boat had stopped working. Along with the king, who was sitting on a little chair on a platform in the aft, they were watching the copter. The other boats were also slowing down, their paddlers motionless and staring.
"They saw the smoke," Eeva said behind him. She moved against his back and gripped his shoulders. He could feel her shaking. "They'll kill me."
Gilluk shouted something. His men unfroze and began to turn the boat around. The other boats followed, and all sped toward the lake shore. Ras wondered where they meant to hide, since the castle was burning, and four houses in town were now flaming, with the promise of more to catch fire.
Eeva dropped her hands from his shoulders and stood by his side.
"What can I do?" she said. "They'll see me for sure if I leave this building."
"Maybe they won't come here," he said. "Why should they?"
"They may have seen all the Sharrikt heading this way. They may wonder why they were coming here, when the castle and town were burning."
That seemed likely, but she wouldn't feel any better if he said so. He was silent as he watched the copter hover about twenty feet above the town. Its wings blew dust on the street and rolled flames out of the burning houses toward the others. There were two men in the transparent body, their profiles black against the sun.
The Sharrikt had run to the western end of town, where they were hiding from the copter.
The copter rose to a point to one side of the castle, circled it three times and went above it once. Then it headed straight toward the island. Ras and Eeva backed up inside the building until the noise indicated that the machine was going over the temple. They went back into the deep entrance while the copter hovered directly above the building. Baastmaast bellowed loudly enough to be heard above the copter.
Eeva pulled at Ras as the lower part of the copter came into their view, but he had already started to leave the doorway. While the wind and the roar blew through the opening, they pressed against the outside walls. Then the noise lessened as the copter rose, and they hid again inside the entrance.
Abruptly, the roar became louder. The copter was coming down for a landing just outside the building. Eeva mouthed something and ran inside. Ras followed her.
"There isn't any other way out!" she yelled. "We're trapped!"
Ras squeezed her shoulder and then pulled her close to him.
"They'll have to kill me first! I don't think they want to do that! I don't think so!"
He led her across the floor and pulled her up the aisle/ramp until they came to the highest level of seats. Beyond this was earth and the wall, the top of which was ten feet above his head.
Ras said, "I'll lift you up. They can't see you going over unless they come into the building or fly up again right now."
The roaring became a putter-putter, a whishing, a silence.
He faced her to the wall, bent his knees, gripped her buttocks, and straightened up. She shot from his hands and caught the edge of the wall. He gripped her ankles and pushed her, stiff-legged, up higher. After she had pulled herself up onto the wall, she turned and reached down to take the spear he held out.
"Get down on the outside and hug the wall," he said.
"I'll break my legs," she said, and then, seeing his expression, she said, "All right! I'll do it!"
He wheeled and ran down the aisle and across the curved strip of earth between the front row of seats and the pool. He did not dare to look around the corner of the doorway, because the men outside would see him. He could not allow them to know that anyone was inside, because then they could get back into the copter and fly overhead and drive them out.
The man entering the building walked slowly but not silently. The end of his shadow fell through the entrance but stopped and did not move for at least a minute. Ras wondered if both men were just outside the entrance, though it seemed logical that one would hang back to cover the other.
The shadow moved on in. Ras, knife in hand, was pressed against the wall. He would never have entered such an easy place for ambush, but then he did not have the arrogance-breeding weapons of these men. Or perhaps the man did not believe that anybody was hiding here, since he had seen the building from inside and outside.
The rifle barrel extended from the entrance and swung back and forth as if it were a snake scenting for danger. Ras reached out and pulled it and the man on through and around. The explosions deafened him; something sang by; stone chips struck him. Then the knife was in the belly and in the white throat, and Ras had a weapon he did not know how to use.
There was a shout from outside in English.
"Al! What happened?"
Ras took the pistol from the dead man's holster and the rifle, and ran across the floor and up the ramp. He threw the two weapons on top of the wall. Another shout came as the man heard the clatter. Ras leaped up, gripped the edge, and pulled himself up and over. Eeva was crouching against the foot of the outside wall. She looked up and made a gesture to indicate that she was all right.
"I killed one!" Ras said. "Here!"
He dropped the pistol, which she caught by letting the spear fall and grabbing out for the pistol. The spear made a clinking noise, which he hoped would not be loud enough to be heard on the other side of the building. He let the rifle fall horizontally, and she seized it with both hands. At that moment, the copter coughed and there was a whining sound.
"Shoot it down before it gets away!" Ras called.
Eeva sprinted around the building, doing something to the rifle as she ran. Ras let himself back down into the building and ran back to the doorway, beside which he had left the bow and arrows. He picked up the bow and an arrow and stepped outside just as the copter was ten feet off the ground and angling upward across the channel. The explosions from Eeva's gun made him jump even though he was expecting them.
Holes appeared in the transparent covering of the fore part of the copter. The man in it--he was white--jerked. Nevertheless, the machine continued to ascend and presently was heading toward the swamp. Eeva ceased firing.
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" she screamed, and then she wept.
"I think you hit him!" Ras said.
She put the rifle in the crook of her arm and put her face against his chest. Her shoulders shook while tears ran down his chest.
"If only I could have gotten him before he was in the copter!" she said. "I can fly one! I can f
ly one! We could have gotten out of here!"
"You're still alive, and we have guns, now," he said. "And if you hadn't wounded him, he might have come back and dropped a fire-bomb. You'll have to teach me how to shoot. But later. We have to get away now. That man will tell the others that you're alive, and they'll be looking for you. And maybe they'll be after me, too."
He pointed across the channel. "The Sharrikt are coming out of the houses."
Eight houses were on fire. The townspeople formed three lines between the burning houses and the lake. Gilluk and his relatives were conferring near the shore. They looked often at the island and gestured toward it.
Eeva said, "This rifle has a scope. I can kill Gilluk from here."
Ras knew that the bullets could go a long way. Yet he was amazed. He felt that there was something unfair about such a weapon. Monstrous might be a better description for it.
"No," he said. "It'll be some time before Gilluk gets courage enough to come after us."
Eeva sighted through the barrel on top of the rifle, made some adjustments, and said, "I could get at least five before they got inside a house."
Ras told her that he wanted to break the rifle against the wall.
"Why are you so disgusted?" she said. "You practically wiped out the Wantso warriors!"
"I did it myself. I didn't use a machine!"
"Your bow is a machine! So is your spear! And your knife!"
"There's a difference," he said. He went into the building, she following. She looked through the dead man's pockets and found three clips of 7.5-millimeter bullets--so Eeva called them--and she took these for the rifle. There were also twenty .32 cartridges in his pocket for the revolver. Eeva also put on the belt with sheath and knife.
Her search found a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and an envelope. Ras examined it and then removed a letter. It was in handwritten English. Ruth Bevans, a woman in Liverpool, England, had written a love letter to Al Lister, who now lay dead in the temple of Baastmaast and would soon go to feed a five-hundred-year-old crocodile. Ruth longed for the day when her lover would return, although she hoped that he would not be as jealous and angry as the last time he came home. He could trust her; she loved only him and would not even think of looking at another man.